The usual stupid way of time and the masses
And while I’m at it, allow me to pause over Grayling’s comment, too.
An equally bad thing about the Dalai Lama’s article is that he calls Buddhism a religion‚ and indeed in the superstitious demon-ridden polytheistic Tibetan version of it that he leads, that is what it is. But original Buddhism is a philosophy, without gods or supernatural beings—all such explicitly rejected by Siddhartha Gautama in offering a quietist ethical teaching; but he has of course been subjected to the Brian’s Sandal phenomenon in the usual stupid way of time and the masses.
Sad, isn’t it. Time and the masses can’t leave a very good and interesting ethical teaching alone, no, they have to stuff superstition and demons into it, to make it more exciting and colorful and photogenic and thrilling. They have to sex it up, in short. But wouldn’t it be nice if time and the masses could learn to sex things up in other, better ways – with sex, perhaps, or lashings of bright color and embroidery and tinkling bells, or food, or music. Demons are fine for stories, but you don’t want to go taking them seriously.
How valid is Buddhism as a philosophy, either? It may not be superstitious, but doesn;t it make truth claims?
I don’t know enough about Buddhism to know, except that I do know several very sane people who find it worthwhile. The mere fact that it makes truth-claims doesn’t make it suspect, and if it skips the superstition, that’s a good start!
Buddhism (I’m not a Buddhist) starts with the affirmation that life is suffering or frustration or lack of getting what one wants. It then posits a path to ending suffering, which has to do with ethical behavior, right views (Buddhist ones) and concentration/meditation. Since suffering for Buddhists has to do with being reborn, the ending of suffering involves ending rebirth, and rebirth is a supernatural claim. Some versions of Buddhism see rebirth as a metaphor (since the self for Buddhists is like that of Hume, an entity/non-entity which is reborn instant by instant with each new thought), and that way some Buddhists eliminate the supernatural claims. Some very sane people are Buddhists, to be sure, but when one tries to argue with them, they tend to become extraordinarily defensive and less sane.
I’m going to dissent, I’m afraid. When I read Grayling’s piece, this is the part that made me groan in frustration, for at least two reasons. There are few things more grating than having some non-believer who lives in a completely different culture make pronouncements as to what is and is not the “real” manifestation of Religion X, at least to me. Think of Karen Armstrong telling people that the “real Islam” is peaceful and tolerant, has been hijacked, etc. It’s fairly hard to take.
Second, and probably more important, is that this myth of the religion, ideology, etc., that supposedly started out “pure” and “undefiled” before degenerating into something much less noble, at least from the point of view of the speaker, is so common as to be a tiresome trope. It’s often used as an “anti-myth” in an attempt to challenge the status quo or religious leaders from within the tradition — think of liberal Muslims saying that the “original” Islam was egalitarian and peaceful, after which it was corrupted due to the machinations of (insert cause here), and that we should “go back to” the “pure,” “original” message of the Prophet. Come to think of it, the Salafis/Wahhabis say the exact same thing, only in their view the later accretions are things like Sufism and compromise with pagan cultural manifestations such as graves and shrines. The Protestant reformers insisted that the “pure” and “original” message of Jesus Christ had been corrupted and taken over by the Catholic Church, which had drowned it under superstition, ritual, and man-made laws, and they were restoring the “true” Christianity of the apostles, shorn of its accretions.
As you might have guessed, though, in all cases there is simply no evidence that the “original” religion was actually as pure, good, and simple as claimed — the sources are all historically iffy in the extreme, and it’s entirely possible that the entire notion of the “pure” and “original” religion being described is actually a later fabrication. There’s really no good historical evidence for what the earliest forms of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam were, since the sources for this are all later and prone to retroject beliefs from the author’s own time into the time of Moses or Jesus or Muhammad…if indeed they existed as described. It is widely accepted by biblical scholars that the book of Deuteronomy, far from being the exact words of Moses, was actually written about the time it was supposedly “found” in the temple circa 600 BCE, and was then used to claim that the Judahites needed to “return” to the teachings and pure monotheism of Moses, which had been “forgotten” (supposedly) under the weight of supposedly later accretions of polytheism and idolatry. In other words, they simply back-dated the documents that supported their view and presented them as being “original” and “ancient.” It’s basically yet another “myth.”
Buddhism has the same problem as the monotheistic religions as far as historicity goes, so there is the issue of determining what the “real” Buddha (assuming he actually existed and said and did the things he is reputed to have done) actually taught and what the “original Buddhism” was, since, again, the founding documents date from centuries later. And I really do think it’s odd for a secular Englishman like Grayling to insist that the religion of millions of Chinese, Japanese, Tibetans, etc., is not “true” Buddhism!
Well, the doctrine of anatta is a good one by my lights. I.e., there is no unchanging spiritual self, such as the Brahminical teachers believed in, that can migrate from body to body. Buddhism denies the spiritual self and transmigration, which is all good, but it kinda goes downhill from there.
Classical Buddhism tried to keep a doctrine of rebirth even while denying transmigration of the spiritual self. The idea is that certain of our conscious states pass over from one life to the next, in that mental properties from this life somehow determine those that commence a newborn life (like the flames from one torch setting alight the next torch in the series, and so on). This might have sounded like a good idea at the time, in a cultural milieu where some kind of doctrine of rebirth was hard to avoid. But it’s a bit difficult to see how any of this could work within the modern scientific framework. And don’t start me on the Buddhist attitude to the good things of this world, which wasn’t much of an advance on that of the Brahminical schools. Classical Buddhism has a fundamental asceticism built into it that I find rather repellent.
Russell: Buddhist ideas about rebirth are complex and often not entirely coherent, but they seem to say, as you point out, that while rebirth is an illusion, suffering (that is, the craving which marks human existence) comes from being reborn (although it is an illusion) and that liberation (or nirvana) is the end of rebirths or of the illusion of rebirth. The Buddhists are good at paradoxes and appear to have repealed the law of non-contradiction. I agree with you about the fundamental asceticism and negation of life.
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I think some of the responses above miss Grayling’s point, which I think was intended to be very broad and probably could have been articulated better (but keep in mind that this was a dashed off e-mail, not a formal essay): Much of the oldest Buddhist writing does in fact describe a world view and practical ethics largely free of supernatural/spiritual claims, and what supernatural elements were present were not of central importance (in stark contrast to the “God says you should do this and shouldn’t do that” foundation of what passes for ethics in most religious traditions). Moreover, many contemporary Buddhists are atheists (including, incidentally, a dear friend of mine who is currently my housemate). Thus, it’s rather a shame that the Dalai Lama – who is chock-full of superstitious nonsense and spouts many pernicious moral and factual claims (see OB’s prior post) – is seen by many as a major (if not THE) spokesperson for Buddhism. And on that score, I agree with Grayling wholeheartedly.
Amos: Buddhism (I’m not a Buddhist) starts with the affirmation that life is suffering or frustration or lack of getting what one wants. It then posits a path to ending suffering, which has to do with ethical behavior, right views (Buddhist ones) and concentration/meditation. Since suffering for Buddhists has to do with being reborn, the ending of suffering involves ending rebirth, and rebirth is a supernatural claim.
I can claim to be a Buddhist though I’ll admit that there are a lot of things in Buddhism that I haven’t learned yet, but I’ll try to answer a little bit from what I’ve learned so far.
First thing first, ‘Dukkha’ in literal means suffering yes, and what you said Amos, about suffering has to do with being reborn is not too far off the mark. What the Buddha meant with suffering is: 1) cannot have what you want/love/crave; 2) be separated with what you want/love/crave; 3) get what you don’t want/love/crave; since all have to do with craving that is why in the 2nd Noble Truth is said that craving the source of dukkha (please differ craving and neccessity :)
So when we are born, we will have all this craving so we will feel suffering when we cannot get what we want and get what we don’t want. I think that makes quite perfect sense, no? What the Buddha taught is the way to end the craving which will in turn end the rebirth process (it will take a lot more page to explain about it, so I’ll just cut it short, you are welcome to study about it, though).